Fernand Léger - *Three musicians (1944)*.

Good morning, Steemit community. Today I am here to talk about Fernand Léger, one of the most important French painters of the first half of the 20th century, and specifically about his painting called The Three Musicians, one of his most acclaimed paintings.

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Fernand Léger was born on February 4, 1881, in the town of Argentan, Normandy, in northern France. The son of a family with peasant roots, when he was sixteen, his first job was as an assistant to an architect in Caen. He worked as an architecture apprentice until he entered the La Ruche Academy of Fine Arts. It is at this time that he begins to develop his plastic skills, influenced by the post-impressionist figure of Paul Cezanne. His first paintings will be a reflection of Cezanne's early work. Later, he will personally meet painters of the stature of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque; under his influence his work will enter a trend close to cubism.

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At the outbreak of hostilities in the Great War, he joined the French army, serving as a stretcher bearer. In 1916, after being wounded in an attack with gas agents, he manages to be discharged from the army. As a result of his experiences in the field of warfare, the painter developed a special interest in the plasticity of war machines, which he would capture in many of his works, where mechanical forces merge with human body, resulting in an amalgam pictorial work that will have points in common with the futurist work. At this time he painted The woman and the child (1922) one of his most representative paintings.

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In 1932 he manages to be appointed as a professor at the Artistic School of La Grande Chaumière. He remained in this position until 1939 when, after being invited to America by Nelson Rockefeller, he decided the following year to take definitive refuge in North America, anticipating the hostilities and Nazi horror. He is appointed professor at Yale. At this time of his life his work manages to evolve from his peculiar vision of cubism, to positions where the realism of group human figures and their interaction in the space of modern life are given greater preponderance. In his last years of existence he became interested in mosaics and ceramics, in fact, he was one of the mosaicists of the famous church of Assay. Fernand Léger would die on August 17 in the city of Gif-sur-Yvette, France, at the age of 74.

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Three Musicians

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Léger's plastic work is very personal, achieving a style in whose themes an attentive look at the abrupt transformations of the first half of the 20th century shines through. His pictorial stroke is without relief, with lines where the color contours are separated, achieving his characteristic plastic solidity. His way of characterizing the vicissitudes of the working class, imbued with a vigorous and on many occasions vitalistic spirit, portrays the deeply humanistic vision of the painter, as well as his belief in an ideal future in which the collective soul would find harmony between effort human and the technological advance of an industrial modernity.

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In this fundamental line, is one of his most famous works, The three musicians (1944). This work contains a deeply vitalistic perspective on the soul of these three players: the expressively large hats, dressed in their best clothes, the attention to detail of their musical instruments, accordion and cello, the huge hands, arranged in such a way as to suggest a filial embrace to the beloved instrument; the faces, haughty and sufficient, confident in their joint talent; their suits of a pristine luminosity, transmitting friendliness and dynamism; All of this converges to give the painting a joint beauty and friendliness by characterizing, through solid lines and the use of clean colors, the honesty and bonhomie of these three characters, intimately united in a common vocation such as music.

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This is the end of this, my first contribution to this community. I wish you all prosperity. Greetings.

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I also send greetings to @event-horizon wishing her the best in the world.

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Reference links:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_L%C3%A9ger

• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fernand-Leger

• https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/fernand-leger-1488/five-things-know-about-fernand-leger